Editorial: Hillary Clinton is prepared to shatter the glass ceiling, but do voters want her?

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

Publisher’s note: A year marked by election firsts, namely that either the first woman ever or a man with no prior political experience will become president of the United States, and both of them carrying highly unfavorable ratings from the American public, calls for another first.

The New Haven Register has decided this year not to endorse a presidential candidate.

This was not a decision entered into lightly, in light of the importance of the decision all voters must make on Nov. 8.

But given that a vast swathe of the American public very much sees one or the other of these candidates as the lesser of two evils, the decision was made to offer fair information here about the positive and negative attributes of both candidates. The same also was written for Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

Following in the footsteps of the first African-American man to be elected president, Clinton appears poised to shatter the zenith of glass ceilings if she becomes the first woman elected to the country’s highest office. She would join the ranks of other female world leaders such as Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the prime minister of Denmark; Yingluck Shinawatra, the prime minister of Thailand and Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, among others.

But Clinton has a problem: She has not able to shake off her error of using a private email server to conduct sensitive government business while she served as Secretary of State — and her opponent is making sure voters don’t forget it.

But with the FBI looking again at additional emails that have just surfaced, Trump’s campaign has been re-ignited and Clinton’s lead has disappeared — though many still believe she will win it all.

But it’s not because Americans have this warm, fuzzy feeling for Clinton or because her campaign platform offers a better road map to solve the nation’s problems. In fact, both presidential candidates are intensely disliked by the majority of the public and many simply see her as the lessor of two evils.

While Trump’s campaign sought division by punishing all Mexicans and Muslims for the actions of a few, Clinton has sought to unify the country with her campaign slogan “Stronger Together.”

With the demographics of the country changing, that’s called smart politics. So was picking Tim Kaine, a bilingual senator from Virginia who can speak directly to the nation’s Hispanic citizens in their own language

According to the Pew Research Center, 226 million Americans are eligible to vote this year — 11 million more than in 2012. More than two-thirds of the 11 million are black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans and the three groups represent 64 million eligible voters. In 2000, 78 percent of the U.S. electorate was white; in 2016, that figure is 69 percent.

There is no questioning the qualifications of Clinton. From domestic to foreign policy, she has had a hand in helping to shape the country, whether that is considered good or bad. Clinton has served as secretary of state, U.S. senator from New York, first lady of the United States and first lady of Arkansas. She has practiced law, been a law professor and her days as an activist began while she was still a college student at Wellesley and continued during her days at Yale University.

Clinton has been part of the Washington scene for more than three decades — and that is part of the problem; she has her own trail of scandals.

There are still unanswered questions about her ties to the donors of the Clinton Foundation and her use of a personal email server to handle classified documents continue to hound her in a big way. Add in other scandals such as Benghazi, Whitewater, travelgate and filegate, and the unanswered questions there, it’s no wonder Clinton’s trustworthiness is called into question and why she is way down on the trust scale of voters.

But it’s hard to spend decades in Washington and not be tinged with some sort of scandal.

As first lady of the United States, Clinton tried but failed to enact the Clinton health care plan of 1993 but she was able to help create the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. At the 1995 UN conference on women, held in Beijing, Clinton stirred controversy in her speech about women’s rights being human rights.

She also help create the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the largest expansion of public health insurance coverage since Medicaid was introduced in 1965; she also orchestrated a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that averted a war and protected Israel’s security.

So Clinton has done a lot more during her time in Washington than get mired in scandal.

Next week, we will find out if those scandals and lack of trust will stand in the way of Americans electing their first female president. And if elected, that unanswered question still remains: What do we call Bill?

Editor’s note: This editorial has been updated to reflect changing information.